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and practice , that in the good times of Greece there is no vestige of anything like sentimentality . Bred to action , and passing their lives in the midst of it , all the speculations of the Greeks were for the sake of action , all their conceptions of excellence had a direct reference to it .
This was the education to form great statesmen , great orators , great warriors , great poets , great architects , great sculptors , great philosophers ; because , once for all , it formed men , and not mere knowledge-boxes ; and the men ,, being men , had minds , and could apply them to the work , whatever it might be , which circumstances had given them to perform . But this lasted not long : demolishing the comparatively weak attempts of their
predecessors , two vast intellects arose , the one the greatest observer of his own or any age , the other the greatest dialectician , and both almost unrivalled in their powers of metaphysical analysis , — Aristotle and Plato . No sooner , by the exertions of these gigantic minds , and of others their disciples or rivals , was a considerable body of truth , or at least of opinion , got together—no sooner did it become possible by mere memory to seem to know something ,
and to be able for some purposes even to use that knowledge , as men use the rules of arithmetic who have not the slightest notion of the grounds of them , than men found out how much easier it is to remember than to think , and abandoned the pursuit of intellectual power itself for the attempt , without possessing it , to
appropriate its results . Even the reverence which mankind had for these great men became a hinderance to following their example . Nature was studied not in nature , but in Plato or Aristotle , in Zeno or Epicurus . Discussion became the mere rehearsal of a lesson got by rote . The attempt to think for oneself fell into disuse ; and , by ceasing to exercise the power , mankind ceased to
possess it . It was in this spirit that , on the rise of Christianity , the doctrines and precepts of Scripture began to be studied . For this there was somewhat greater excuse , as , where the authority was that of the Omniscient , the confirmation of fallible reason might appear less necessary . Yet the effect was fatal . The
interpretation of the Gospel was handed over to grammarians and language-grinders . The words of him whose speech was in figures and parables were iron-bound and petrified into inanimate and inflexible / ormufoe . Jesus was likened to a logician , framing a rule to meet all cases , and provide against all possible evasions , instead of a poet , orator , and vates , whose object was to purify
and spiritualize the mind , so that , under the guidance of its purity , its own lights might suffice to find the law of which he only supplied the spirit , and suggested the general scope . Hence , out of the least dogmatical of books , have been generated so many dogmatical religions—each claiming to be found in . the book , and none in the mind of man ; they are above
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On Genius .- 057
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 657, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/9/
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